Wonders of the World

Wonders of the World: Lecture 1

Schmidt Number: S-2427

On-line since: 31st March, 2002

Lecture 1

18th August, 1911

T

HE
opening words of our festival this year were put into the mouth of Hermes,
[ 1 ]
the messenger of the gods, and in view of what our
own Spiritual Science aspires to be, we may perhaps look upon this as
symbolic. For to us Spiritual Science is not just a source of
ordinary worldly knowledge, but a ‘mediator’; through it
we may indeed rise up into those super-sensible worlds whence
according to the ancient Greeks it was Hermes who brought down the
spark which could kindle in men the strength to ascend thither. And
taking my start from these words of Hermes, I may perhaps be allowed
to add to what has resounded during the last few days out of the
performances themselves some observations linking them with the
lectures that are to follow.

These performances
have not been given merely as a sort of embellishment of our
festival; they should be regarded as deeply integral part of the
annual celebration which has been held here for many years, and as
the focus of our spiritual-scientific activity here in Munich. This
year we have been able to open with a renewal of the drama which is
the origin of all western dramatic art, a drama which we can only
really grasp by looking beyond the whole historical tradition of
dramatic art in the West. This also makes it a worthy introduction to
a spiritual-scientific festival, for it takes us back into ages of
European cultural development when the several activities of the
human mind and soul which today we find separated as science, art and
religion were not yet sundered from one another. It carries us back
in feeling to the very first beginnings of European cultural
development, to times when a unified culture, born directly out of
the deepest spiritual life, fired men with religious fervour for the
highest that the human soul can reach; it was a culture pulsating
with religious life, indeed it may be said that it was
religion. Men did not look upon religion as a separated branch of
their culture, but they still spoke of religion, even when their
minds were directly concerned with the practical affairs of everyday
life. That very concern itself was raised to the level of a religion,
for religion shed its rays over every experience which man could
have. But this archetypal religion was inwardly very strong, very
powerful in its particular workings. It did not confine itself to a
vaguely exalted religious response to great powers of the universe;
its inspiration was so strong that some of those particular workings
took forms which were none other than those of art. Religious life
overflowed into bold forms, and religion was one with art. Art was
the daughter of religion, and still lived in the closest ties of
kinship with her mother. No religious feeling in our own day has the
intensity which imbued those who took part in the ancient Mysteries
and saw religious life pouring itself into the forms of art.

But this archetypal
religion and its daughter, art, were at the same time so purified, so
lifted into the refining spheres of etheric spiritual life that their
influence even brought out in human souls something of which today we
have a faint reflection, an abstract reflection, in our science and
knowledge. When feeling became more intense, became filled with
enthusiasm for what as religion overflowed into artistic form, then
knowledge of the gods and of divine things, knowledge of
spirit-land, was kindled in the soul. Thus knowledge was the other
daughter of religion, and she too lived in close family relationship
with the archetypal mother of all culture.

If we ask ourselves
what we are hoping to achieve with today's feeble beginning ...
the answer is that we would rekindle in mankind something like a
unification, a harmony, between art and science. For only thus can
the soul, fired by feeling, strengthened by the best in our will,
imbue every aspect of human culture with that singleness of vision
which will lead men up again into the divine heights of his
existence, while. at the same time it permeates the most commonplace
actions of everyday life. Then what we call profane life will became
holy, for it is only profane because its connection with the divine
source of all existence has been forgotten.

The festival we have
organised this year is meant to be a direct expression of this
feeling, which simply must enliven us if the truths of Spiritual
Science are to enter into the depths of human souls. That is why it
is in accordance with spiritual science, in the literal meaning of
those words, that we should look upon
The Mystery of Eleusis
as a kind of sun which, shedding its rays in our hearts, can arouse a
true perception of what Spiritual Science is.

What is generally
known as drama, what is recognised in the West as dramatic art and
reached its culmination in Shakespeare, is a current of spiritual
life originating in the Mystery; it is a secularisation of the
ancient Mystery. If we trace it back to its origin, we come to
something like
The Mystery of Eleusis.

We already had all
this in mind some years ago, when we produced this very drama at the
Munich Congress of the Theosophical Society. I may perhaps mention an
incident which may throw light upon our aims, for day-to-day
happenings do have a dose bearing upon the spiritual ideal which
hovers before our minds. When some time ago we were beginning to
prepare for the production of
The Children of Lucifer,
[ 2 ]
I remembered something which I
think greatly influenced the course of our Middle European
spiritual-scientifie development. When I myself judged that the time
had come for me to bring my spiritual work into connection with what
we may call Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, it was a discussion
about this play,
The Children of Lucifer,
which gave me the
opportunity I needed. Following upon that talk we allowed our
thoughts about our work to pass through a period of development of
seven years; but the seed which had been laid in our souls with the
words spoken about
The Children of Lucifer
meanwhile
developed silently in our hearts, according to the law of the
seven-yearly rhythm. At the end of the seven years we were ready to
produce a German version of The Children of Lucifer at the opening of
our annual festival at Munich.

In today's
talk, which is to serve as an introduction to the lectures which are
to follow, I may perhaps be allowed to link this thought with
another, which springs from the depths of my heart, out of deepest
conviction. The kind of spiritual life which in future will
increasingly influence western minds will have to be cast in a
specific form. Today it is possible to think of Anthroposophy or
Spiritual Science in various ways. Men do not always think in
accordance with the necessities of existence, in accordance with the
evolutionary forces at work in man, but they think in conformity with
their own will, their own sentiment; thus one person may regard this,
the other that, as the right ideal. There are many ideals of
Anthroposophy, according to the dispositions of men's hearts,
according as their sentiments and feelings incline them this way or
that. True occultism at a somewhat higher level shows us however that
such hankerings after an ideal are always something connected with
our own personality. Ideals of this kind are really only what one or
another would like to think of as Anthroposophy, something which his
own peculiar sentiment and the make-up of his intellect causes him to
believe the best. Anthroposophy is not the only thing about which men
form their opinions out of feelings and personal motives, but
Spiritual Science must learn not to take what springs from our own
personal feeling as the standard of measurement. As persons we are
always liable to err, however much we may believe ourselves to be
cherishing an unselfish ideal. We can only form an opinion about what
has to happen in human evolution when we entirely suppress our own
personal feelings about the ideal, and no longer ask what we
ourselves consider the best way to treat of Spiritual Science. For we
can only come to a true opinion if we let the necessities of life
speak, quite regardless of our own inclinations, regardless of what
particular expression of spiritual life we prefer; we can only arrive
at a true opinion if we ask ourselves how European civilisation has
taken shape in recent centuries, and what are its immediate needs. If
we put the question to ourselves without bias, we get an answer which
is twofold. Firstly, if European cultural life is not to dry up, to
become a ‘waste land’, the great, the overwhelming need
— shown by all that is happening in the life of the mind today
— is Spiritual Science. Secondly, it needs a spiritual science
suited to the conditions which have developed through the centuries,
not in any one of us, but in Europe as a whole. But we shall only be
able to give them a spiritual science which meets these conditions if
we ask ourselves unselfishly what it is that Europeans have learnt to
think and to feel during recent centuries, and what it is that they
are thirsting for as a means for the spiritual deepening of their
lives.

If we put this
question to ourselves, then all the signs of the times show us that
it cannot be a continuation of the occultism, the mysticism, which
has been known for thousands of years, and which has been rich in
blessing for diverse peoples. The continuation of this mystic lore as
it has always been known, as it has been handed down by history,
could not meet the needs of European civilisation. We should be
committing a sin against European civilisation and everything
connected with it if we were merely to immerse ourselves in ancient
occultism; we should be putting our personal preferences above the
necessities of existence. However great our personal inclination for
some form or other of ancient occultism, let us suppress this, and
ask ourselves what it is that men need in the conditions which
have come about through centuries of development. The signs of
the times make it equally clear that what we call modern science,
however high may be the esteem in which it is held today, however
great may be the authority which it enjoys, is like a tree that has
passed its prime and will bear little fruit in future. When I say
that what today is known as physical science is a withering
branch in humanity's mental and spiritual heaven, I know
that it will be thought a bold assertion, but it is at any rate not
an idle one. Science has rendered good service; to throw light upon
the conditions of its existence, as I have just done, is not to
disparage it.

Neither ancient
occultism nor modern science will serve to satisfy the deepest need
of the humanity of the future, the need to establish a link between
the human soul and spiritual revelation. That is what hovered
before us, as if inscribed in letters of gold, when we began some
years ago to develop the spiritual life on broader lines. And if I
may be allowed to say something which is as much a matter of feeling
as of conviction, I would say that, considered objectively and
without bias in relation to the question I have raised, the work of
our esteemed friend Edouard Schuré,
Les Grands Initiés,
[ 3 ]
steering as it does a
middle course between purely historical occultism, which can be read
up anywhere from historical records, and the academic learning which
is a withering branch of civilisation, is an extremely important
literary beginning with the kind of spiritual life which will be
needed all over Europe in the future. It is a most significant
beginning towards the apprehension of true Anthroposophy, an
Anthroposophy which observes life directly, sees how spiritual life
at present is a slow trickle, sees how the stream will widen. I
pointed this out at the commencement of my lectures here a year ago.
[ 4 ]
Anyone who can to some extent see into
the future, anyone who sees what that future demands of us, knows
that with
Les Grands Initiés
a first literary step has
been taken along that golden middle road between ancient occultism
and modern, but decadent, science, and that this beautiful and
important beginning which has already been made by that book for all
European countries, will assume ever further forms. The book is
coloured by a turn of thought which does not impress us
sympathetically just because of our own personal preferences for this
or that form of spiritual science, but because we see that the
necessities of European civilisation, making themselves felt ever
more insistently, demanded that such a literary beginning should be
made. If you know this book, you know how impressively it calls
attention to the Mystery of Eleusis, a subject which Schuré
subsequently developed further in
Sanctuaires d'Orient.
[ 5 ]

What kind of thoughts
are aroused in us by these indications — anthroposophical in
the best sense — which we find in
Les Grands Initiés,
and by the reconstruction of the Mystery of
Eleusis? If we look back to the original sources of European artistic
and spiritual life, we find there two figures, figures which have a
deep significance for a truly theosophical grasp of the whole of
modern spiritual life — two figures which stand out as
symbolical presentations of great spiritual impulses. To those who
can look below the surface of the spiritual life of today these
figures appear like two beams of prophetic light: they are Persephone
and Iphigenia. With these two names we are in a way touching upon
what are really two souls in modern man, two souls whose union is
only achieved through the severest ordeals. In the course of the next
few days we shall see more clearly how Persephone arouses in our
hearts the thought of an impulse to which we have often alluded in
our spiritual-scientific studies. Once upon a time it was given to
mankind to acquire knowledge in a way different from that of today.
From earlier lectures we know of an ancient clairvoyance which in
primeval times welled forth in human nature, so that clairvoyant
pictures took shape in men's souls, as inevitably as hunger and
thirst and the need for air arise in their bodies — pictures
filled with the secrets of the spiritual worlds. This was the
primeval gift of seership which man once possessed, and of which he
was so to say bereft by the gradual birth in him of knowledge in its
later form. The ancient Greek partly felt that in his own time the
rape of ancient clairvoyance by modern knowledge was already taking
place and partly foresaw that this would happen more and more in the
future — a future which has become our own present. He thus
turned his gaze upwards to that divine figure who released in the
human soul directly out of elemental Nature the forces which led to
that ancient clairvoyance. He looked up to that goddess called
Persephone, who was the regent of this old clairvoyance bound up with
human nature. And then this ancient Greek said to himself: ‘In
place of this ancient clairvoyance another culture will become more
and more widespread, a civilisation directed by men themselves and
born of them, born of men to whom the ancient clairvoyance is already
lost.’

In the civilisation
which the ancient Greek associated with the names of Agamemnon,
Odysseus, Menelaus, we find the external civilisation which we know
today, untouched by forces of clairvoyance. It is a civilisation
whose knowledge of nature and her laws is assumed to be as useful for
finding a philosophical basis for the secrets of existence as it is
for making armaments. But men no longer feel that this kind of mental
culture requires a sacrifice — they no longer feel that in
order to achieve it they must offer sacrifice in a deeper sense to
the higher spiritual Beings who direct the super-sensible worlds.
These sacrifices are in fact being made, but men are as yet too
inattentive to notice them. The ancient Greek did notice that this
external culture which he traced back to Agamemnon, Menelaus,
Odysseus, involved sacrifice; it is the daughter of the human spirit
who in a certain way has to be sacrificed ever anew. And he
represented this perpetual sacrifice demanded by intellectual culture
as the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon. Thus to the
question raised by the sacrifice of Iphigenia there resounds a
wonderful answer! If nothing but that external culture which can be
traced back, as the ancient Greek understood it, to Agamemnon,
Menelaus, Odysseus, were given to mankind, then under its influence
men's hearts, the deepest forces of souls, would have withered
away. It is only because mankind retained the feeling that it should
make perpetual sacrifice and should single out, set apart from this
general intellectual culture, rites which, not superficially, but in
a more profound sense, may be called sacerdotal — it is only
because of this that this intellectual civilisation has been saved
from drying up completely. Just as Iphigenia was offered to Artemis
as a sacrifice, but through her sacrifice became a priestess, so in
the course of bygone millennia certain elements of our intellectual
civilisation have had repeatedly to be cleansed and purified and
given a sacerdotal-religious character in sacrifice to the higher
gods, so that they should not cause the hearts and souls of men to
wither up. Just as Persephone stands for the leader of the ancient
clairvoyant culture, so Iphigenia represents the perpetual sacrifice
which our intellectuality has to make to the deeper religious
life.

These two factors
have already been alive in European cultural life from the time of
ancient Greece right up to the present time — from the time
when Socrates first wrested scientific thinking from the old unified
culture, right up to the time when poor Nietzsche, in travail of his
soul, had recourse to the separation of the three branches of culture
— science, art and religion — and lost his balance as a
result. Because forces are already working towards the reunification
of what for millenia has had to be separated, because the future
already lights up the present with its challenge, the present age,
through its representatives — men inspired by the Spirits of
the Age — has had to realise anew the two impulses just
characterised, and to connect them with the names of Persephone and
Iphigenia. And if one realises this, it brings home to one the
significance of Goethe's action in immersing himself in the
life of ancient Greece and expressing in the symbol of Iphigenia what
he himself felt to be the culmination of his art. When he wrote his
Iphigenia,
which in a way brings to symbolic expression the
whole of his work, Goethe made his first contact with the spiritual
riches of European antiquity. Out of that deed of Goethe's
there resounds to us today the secret thought: ‘If Europe is
not to be blighted by her intellectuality we must remember the
perpetual sacrifice which intellectual culture has to make to
religious culture.’ The whole compass of intellectual
civilisation furnishes for the higher spiritual life an atmosphere as
harsh as King Thoas in
Iphigenia.
But in the figure of
Iphigenia herself we meet gentleness and harmony, which do not hate
with those that hate but love with those who love. Thus when Goethe
was inspired in presenting his Iphigenia to Europe to testify to the
perpetual sacrifice of intellectuality it was a first reminder of
all-important impulses for the spiritual life of Europe. We may
indeed feel that his soul was enlightened by the spiritual inspirers
of modern times.

A second reminder was
needed, for which we have had to wait a little longer — one
which points to an age when the old clairvoyant culture was still
alive, the culture associated with the name of Persephone. In that
chapter of
Les Grands Initiés
which rises to a certain
climax in the description of the Mystery of Eleusis, one again feels
inspirers of European spiritual life working to conjure up out of the
glimmering darkness of the age a growing recognition that the old
clairvoyant culture represented by Persephone must light up again.
One pole of modern European spiritual life was given in the revival
of the ancient Iphigenia-figure; the other pole comes with the
recreation of the
Mystery of Eleusis
by Edouard Schuré.
And we must regard it as one of the most fortunate of the stars that
rule our efforts, that this performance of The Mystery of Eleusis is
allowed to shed its light upon our anthroposophical life in the
presence of its recreator, who has now for several years rejoiced us
by his presence.

What I have just said
is only partly a matter of feeling. From another aspect it is a
thought springing from the most sober and objective conviction. If I
have expressed this conviction today, it is because I agree with
Goethe that ‘only what proves fruitful is true’ — a
pearl of wisdom for our whole pursuit of knowledge. If there is any
sign of fruitfulness in what we have been doing for years past, we
may acknowledge that the thinking which has inspired our work for
many years, the thinking which has always been present with us as a
hidden guest, as a comrade in arms, has shown itself to be true by
its fruitfulness. In the next few days, when we come to talk about
‘Wonders of Nature, Ordeals of the Soul and Revelations of the
Spirit’ we shall have much to say in illustration of our theme
which will have a bearing upon what I have just said about Iphigenia
and Persephone. Here let me preface that as Iphigenia is the daughter
of Agamemnon — one of those Heroes to whom the ancient Greek
traced the cult of its intellectuality in its widest sense, with the
practical and aggressive forms it takes — so Persephone is the
daughter of Demeter. Now we shall see that Demeter is the ruler of
the greatest wonders of Nature, she is an archetypal form which
points to a time when the life of the human brain was not yet cut off
from the general bodily life, a time when nutrition by external
foodstuffs and thinking through the instrument of the brain were not
separate functions. When the crops were thriving in the fields it was
still felt at that time that thinking was alive there, that hope was
outpoured over the fields and penetrated the activity of
Nature's wonder like the song of the lark. It was still felt
that along with material substance spiritual life is absorbed into
the human body, becomes purified, becomes spirit — as the
archetypal mother, out of whom what is born elementally becomes
Persephone in the human being himself. The name of Demeter points us
back to those far distant times when human nature was so unified that
all bodily life was at the same time spiritual, that all bodily
assimilation went hand in hand with spiritual assimilation,
assimilation of thought. Today we can only learn what things were
like then from the Akashic record. It is from the Akashic record that
we learn that Persephone is the true daughter of Demeter. It is there
too that we learn that Eros, another figure who appears in the
reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis, represents the means
whereby, according to Greek sentiment, the forces of Demeter in the
course of human development have become what they are today. When
Demeter stands before us on the stage, with the stern admonition of a
primeval force, for ever and as if by enchantment permeating all
human feeling, the whole marvel of human nature is immediately
conjured up before our souls. Something stands before us there in
Demeter which speaks throughout all ages of time as an impulse of
human nature. When Demeter is on the stage we feel it streaming
towards us. She is the mightiest representative of
‘chastity’ — as today we abstractly call it —
that archetypal force with all its fruitful efficacy when it is not
mere asceticism, but embraces humanity's archetypal love. On
the other hand what speaks to us in the figure of Eros? It is
budding, innocent love. Eros is its ruler ... that is what the
Greeks felt.

Now the drama
unfolds. What are the forces which are at work with supporting
life-giving power throughout the whole drama from beginning to end?
Chastity, which is at the same time archetypal love in all its
fruitfulness, in its interplay with budding, innocent love. This is
what holds sway in the drama, just as positive and negative
electricity hold sway in the everyday wonders of Nature. Thus
throughout the space into which this pregnant archetypal drama is
poured, there may be more or less consciously sensed something of the
forces which have been at work since the beginning of time and which
still permeate our modern life; though those archetypal currents, the
Demeter current and the Eros current, will in the future become more
and more absorbed in a way by the tendencies represented in the three
figures Luna, Astrid and Philia. This will be further elucidated in
the next few days. We shall be shown a living relationship between
the currents which are those of man's origin — Demeter
and Eros with Persephone between them—and on the other hand
something which dawns in us today in a form as yet impersonal; it is
like a spiritual conscience which as yet calls to us from the unknown
and does not venture upon the stage; it is only a voice from without.
I am speaking of the three figures Luna, Astrid, Philia, the true
daughters of Persephone.

I have tried to put
before you the feelings which prompted us to give pride of place, at
the opening of our studies, to
The Mystery of Eleusis
in its reconstruction by Edouard Schuré. No doubt the training you
have received in recent years will enable you to view our present
performances of this important work in the way which should come
naturally to us in the anthroposophical Movement. Today it is
frightfully easy to taunt us with amateurishness in comparison with
what we are given as dramatic art in the world outside; it is easy to
point out the mistakes which we all make if with our feeble
capacities we tackle such a great work as this
Mystery of Eleusis.
But we are not trying, or at any rate we ought not to
be trying, to represent things in the same manner as is done on the
ordinary modern stage. Those today who already have some inkling of
the impress our special kind of spiritual knowledge should give to
art will know that we are aiming at something quite different. They
will also know that performances which will only be able to achieve a
certain perfection in the future must make a beginning in all their
imperfection in the present. We are not called upon to compete with
ordinary stage performances. We do not dream of such a thing, and it
is a mistake even to make such comparisons. Let the dramatic critic
say what he will about other stage performances, he is a mere amateur
as regards what Spiritual Science is aiming at, what it must aim at,
even in the realm of art.

Those of you who can
share the profound gratitude which I feel every time at the opening
of our Munich festivals to all who have helped to bring them about
will not think it inappropriate or too personal if again this year I
express my thanks to them at the close of this introductory lecture.
Not only have many hands been needed to make this festival possible,
but it has needed souls who have already permeated themselves with
what can be the finest fruit of a life of spiritual effort —
spiritual warmth. This spiritual warmth is never without effect and
always brings a gradually developing skill in its appropriate sphere.
Thus, each time we set to work — first the small group of those
here in Munich who are the forerunners of the larger community which
then gathers here — we find ourselves filled with spiritual
warmth, and, even when to begin with everything seems to go very
badly, we have faith that our work must succeed. And it does
succeed to the full extent of our capacities. This undertaking proves
to us that spiritual forces hold sway in the world, that they help
us, that we may entrust ourselves to them. And if sometimes it seems
as if things are not going well, then we say to ourselves that if we
are not successful it is because the powers behind our activity do
not intend us to succeed, and not to succeed would then be the right
thing. Thus we do what we have to do without giving a thought to the
sort of performance which will finally emerge. We think of the
spiritual forces, to which we too in the sense of our own time are
making our puny sacrifice — the sacrifice of modern
intellectuality to the religious deepening of the human heart. It is
beautiful to see what spiritual warmth there is in that small group,
wonderful to see how each individual in undertaking his or her by no
means easy sacrificial task actually experiences something spiritual.
It is a fraternal offering which those who participate in it carry
out for us. Those who understand this will share the grateful feeling
to which I now give expression.

Our thanks of course
go in the first place to the recreator of the Mystery of Eleusis, and
then to my numerous fellow-workers here in Munich. I remember
especially those who throughout many years of work in the service of
Spiritual Science, permeated with loving spiritual warmth, have felt
the call to unite their knowledge and experience with what we here
are trying to do. Let me first gratify a heartfelt wish by alluding
to the two ladies who have co-operated with me in quite a special
way, Fräulein Stinde and Countess Kalckreuth, so that today the
beautiful harmony between their spiritual thinking and their purely
technical work shines upon us everywhere in this Munich festival.
Permit me to mention our good friend Adolf Arenson, who in this as in
previous years has composed the music for all three plays. I leave it
to your own hearts to judge of these compositions. I myself regard it
as a fortunate destiny that our work should have been completed by
the musical compositions of our dear friend Arenson. Further I feel
it to be a particular mark of good fortune that the stage effects
which hovered over the scenes and imbued them with a truly religious
spirit should have been carried out so admirably by Baroness von
Eckhardstein. To me every flicker of light, be it red or blue, every
shade in the scenic effect, be it light or subdued, is important and
meaningful, and that the Baroness should feel this is among the
things which we should regard as indeed the work of the spirit.

I need only call your
attention to the scenery contributed by our artists Herr Linde, Herr
Folkert and Herr Hass, and in mentioning them I would like you to
understand that the spiritual thought which lives in their souls has
found its way even into their paint brushes. It is
spirituality which you see in the scenery which these three
have contributed. Of course in none of the things I have mentioned do
we find perfection, but we find the beginning of an aim. I should
like you to see in all that is willed here, in all that cannot yet be
fully achieved, how one can think of the future development of
art.

That is why it is so
tremendously important too that the dramatic production should only
be in the hands of actors who are striving for spiritual knowledge.
It is my wish, not out of personal preference but because it cannot
be otherwise, that not a single word in our dramatic performances
should be spoken by anyone not of our way of thinking, even though
those words should be spoken with perfect artistry and the utmost
refinement of stage diction.

What we are aiming at
is something quite different from the customary stage technique. We
are not aiming at what people call art today; what we want is that in
each of those who stand on the stage his heart should speak out of
spiritual warmth, and that such an atmosphere should breathe through
the whole performance, be that performance good or indifferent, that
we should experience spiritual warmth as art and art as spiritual
warmth. For this reason every one who is present at these dramatic
festivals which precede our lecture cycles at Munich must feel,
‘there is not a word spoken in this production which is not
experienced in the depths of the actor's soul.’ In many
respects this results in a certain reserve, a certain restraint,
which anyone who has no desire to feel in a spiritual way may regard
as amateurish, but it is the beginning of something which is to come,
the beginning of something which will one day be regarded as artistic
truth in the deepest and most spiritual sense of the words, however
imperfect and rudimentary it may seem to you today. Therefore it will
never occur to those of you who have understanding to want to cut
passages. You will calmly accept all the long passages necessitated
by the subject. Nothing is too long for us, nothing too undramatic,
in the modern, generally accepted sense of the word, because we are
concerned, not with the demands of external ‘theatre’,
but with the inner necessities of the subject, and we will never
abandon our dramatic convictions. For example, take the fairy-tale
you heard yesterday, the fairy-tale that Felicia tells Capesius in
the
fifth scene of my playThe Soul's Probation.
The habitual theatre goer would pronounce it deadly dull. We must
never shrink from putting long passages which may seem tedious on the
stage, if dramatic truth calls for it. Dramatic truth is the
overruling consideration in our productions.

Moreover, dramatic
freedom demands that every individual who does us the favour of
co-operating with us should have freedom of action as regards his own
part, so that each one can feel that every action he makes and every
word he utters on the stage proceeds from himself. You will never see
in our performances an arbitrary stage-production such as is so very
fashionable today. In its place you will feel the influence of that
spirit which breathes unseen over our production as a whole, even if
only in a rudimentary and imperfect way, but which is able to
multiply its work in each individual concerned. Hence when one is
involved in such an enterprise as this, one feels above all things
profound gratitude for the sacrifices made by every single actor. It
is not possible to mention each one individually, because so many
have helped, but each one has accomplished much.

I might continue this
catalogue of thanks for a long time. Lastly I might thank you all for
having shown understanding for what one day, in the drama of the
future, will be regarded as a sine qua non — that what
is not seen on the stage must play its part as well as what is seen,
that what is merely hinted at must have a place as well as the more
material impersonations; that some figures must stand out in the
illumination of the footlights, while others have rather to be
secretly insinuated in the depths of the human word. What is intended
in my Mystery Plays and will more and more be felt as the true
meaning of the three figures Philia, Astrid and Luna can only partly
be conveyed in the light in which they appear on the stage in bodily
form; for with these three figures which are intended to represent
important impulses of human evolution, intimate secrets of the soul
are also bound up, intimate secrets which one only appreciates
rightly by coupling what arrests one's attention by its strong
illumination with what is suggested in the intimacy of the spoken
word. These three feminine figures working in the silvery moonlight
and fashioning from the evanescent forms taken by the spray the
chalice which subtly represents what they are aiming at both in their
more manifest as well as in their more delicate form— these
beings whom we encounter in the silvery moonlight of the fairy-tale,
and who show us how they accompany the souls of men as intimate
friends, show us how men are formed in childhood, what they look like
after thrice three hundred and sixty weeks have gone by — these
beings can only be understood when one takes into consideration both
aspects, the one grasped by the senses and outwardly visible, seen on
the stage in tangible form, and the other aspect, which seems so
tedious to the modern theatre goer, communicated through the telling
of a delicate fairy-tale ... the only vehicle fit to convey the
subtlety of meaning expressed by such figures as Luna, Astrid and
Philia. And when one sees that already today there are a number of
souls who are capable of pure unprejudiced feeling as regards what is
not easily tolerated on the stage, then one can say ... Spiritual
Science is grateful to you that you have been willing to train your
souls to experience and absorb what has been attempted here in its
service. For all these reasons, at the close of this introduction to
our forthcoming lectures you will not mind my giving this expression
to my gratitude.

Thankfulness and joy
again and again fill me, not only when I see our fellow workers
co-operate and adapt themselves to what is new, but also when I see
men like our stage hands working for us so willingly. I feel it is
really something to be thankful for, when one of the workmen asks if
he too may have a book. I know well that everything is very
rudimentary and imperfect, but it is something which will bear fruit,
something which will work on. If out of all that we have attempted to
do at the opening of our Munich festival one thing is impressed upon
us — that Spiritual Science is not meant to be something
abstract, a hobby which one pursues, but that it is related to the
conditions of our whole life — then the modest effort which we
have tried to make, as a beginning only, will have had its effect;
something of what we have been aiming at will have been achieved. In
this spirit I welcome you at the outset of this cycle of lectures,
which is to be devoted to the study of many things we encounter when
we direct our gaze into the vast world, and experience what for the
ancient Greeks was the origin of all theosophy, all philosophy
— when we experience ‘wonder’, from which we derive
the German word meaning miracle; when we experience some premonition
of those ‘ordeals of the soul’, and when we see what may
well be the resolution of all wonder and the liberation from all
ordeals which ‘revelations of the spirit’ can effect.
What can be experienced from all these three — from the wonders
of Nature, from the ordeals of the soul, from the redeeming
revelations of the Spirit, this then is to be the subject of our
forthcoming studies.

Notes:

1. Dr. Steiner
is referring to the opening words of Edouard Schuré's
The Mystery of Eleusis,
a performanee of which in the
German language together with performances of the first two of
Dr. Steiner's own Mystery Plays had preceded the giving of
these lectures

English translation,
The Children of Lucifer
by B. Kemmis, (Rudolf Steiner Publishing Company, 1935).

The production to
which Dr. Steiner refers was from a German translation by Marie
von Sivers put into free verse by Rudolf Steiner, but not
published until 1955, under the title
Lucifer, Die Kinder des Lucifer.
(Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland.)